Photos by Danny Knaub By David Schultz Winding down from a yearlong tour this tantalizing sequel to the 30-year and still running Phantom of The Opera is not to be missed. But alas, it is for all the wrong reasons. Love Never Dies opened to a critically mixed reception in 2009, and closed…
By Ron Cohen Final Follies, with its prophetic title, was the last play written by prolific and well-applauded playwright A. R. Gurney, who died in June 2017. The one-act work further cements Gurney’s already rock-solid reputation as the wit-filled chronicler of the diminishment of the human species known as Wasp. In case you’ve…
Jay O. Sanders by Arney Rosenblat The initial offering of the Hunter Theater Project, and a Richard Nelson imprint production, brings Chekhov to life for contemporary audiences. Seeing and connecting, and connect you likely will as the characters frequently speak directly to the audience, will make you feel like a voyeur to the…
By Julia Polinsky Brian Katz’s adaptation of Mother Night is, by turns, a labor of love, a time-blending story centered on the consequences of WWII, and a mess. It shrieks of being the product of years of careful study and involvement with the Vonnegut book. The problem is: the Vonnegut book. The…
Todd Almond (center) and company Photo: Joan Marcus By Fern Siegel For many, Bob Dylan is the poet laureate of American longing. His lyrical expressions of yearning, heartbreak and loss have been recast as a moving new musical — Girl From The North Country — at The Public Theater. Set in 1934 in Duluth,…
What the Constitution Means to Me By Ron Cohen It could be described as a civics lesson disguised as a play…or vice versa. Or it could be called a personal family memoir, relating the years of domestic violence and disparagement endured by women, abuse and inequality tacitly supported or ignored by the Constitution….
Photos by Monique Carboni by Julia Polinsky As written by James Hindman and directed by Christian Borle, Popcorn Falls is a mile-a-minute silly experiment in loopy absurdity, with some laughs, some wincing, and the hardest working two-man cast ever. Welcome to Popcorn Falls, where the forces of commerce and greed sweep away…
Ahmed Aly Elsayed, Ethan Hova, Ben Schnetzer photos by Joan Marcus By Ron Cohen You may not be enticed into becoming a snooker fan by The Nap, but you’ll probably enjoy the hubbub that surrounds the game in this British comedy, being given its Broadway premiere by Manhattan Theatre Company. The play is…
By Ron Cohen “No matter how much you loved how beautifully I might play the ingenue, it was always beneath me. It is beneath all women.” So declares the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt, as portrayed by the acclaimed English actress Janet McTeer in Bernhardt/Hamlet by the esteemed American playwright Theresa Rebeck. It’s…
Megan McQueen By R. Pikser Bernard Pomerance, the author of the critically acclaimed Elephant Man, drafted Spin Off in 2003 and revised it in 2006. Though Mr. Pomerance died a little over a year ago, the project of putting it on the stage continued without him and now it is being performed at…